Your self-fulfilling prophesy
In the time we’d been working together, Anna had lost 9 kg.
Before coming to see me, she'd had a diagnosis of insulin resistance and history of trying ‘everything’ to lose weight and struggling to do so. But she was seeing results and was thrilled.
Anna was feeling more confident with her food choices, as well as knowing when and how much to eat. She was also confident that her body would be able to lose the further 20 or so kilos she so desperately wanted gone.
Then, she decided to join a one-month ‘shredding’ challenge at her gym.
For one month, she ate the limited carb, high protein diet her personal trainer (PT) gave her, increased her exercise and despite losing one centimetre off her waist, the scales didn’t change. Not even a few grams.
One month later, after all this hard work and effort, there was no change to her weight. Anna got scared. She’d been here before.
Her mind started panicking and came up with all sorts of thoughts:
‘I’m stuck. I’m going to be stuck at this weight.’
‘I can’t lose weight anymore. I’m going to be overweight forever.’
‘I’ve hit a plateau. Despite doing all this extra work and eating less, I won’t lose weight.’
‘If I stop doing all this work, I’ll regain all the weight I’ve lost.’
But here’s the thing. None of those thoughts are FACTS.
Anna wasn’t freaking out about things that are true, because the future is anything but certain. Without a crystal ball, none of us know what we’re capable of.
She was freaking out about an imaginary future she’d created in her mind.
And the BIG problem is, when you create a future like this and feed it with your anxious energy, you begin to live it.
What this means is, if Anna continues to align with that freaky future by giving it her full attention, she won’t be confident that she knows what’s best and right for her body. She’ll keep restricting and listening to others, thinking they know what’s best. And her prediction will come true!
That is what’s called a self-fulling prophecy.
There are facts and then there are your thoughts. Thoughts are tricky. We believe them because they’re in our head. And believing them can get us into a lot of trouble.
Anna wasn’t freaking out because of facts. She was freaking out because of where her mind went. She felt her body wasn’t doing what it was meant to do and she had no control over it.
We’re all pretty good at predicting a doomy, gloomy future for ourselves. And the more we allow that kind of narrative to play over and over in our heads, the more power we give it.
But where else could her mind go? It could go to the facts that:
Before she started the challenge, what she was doing worked.
When she listened to her body and allowed it to guide her, rather than following other people’s advice, she was successful.
If she went back to doing what worked before, it will most likely work again. She would only know this by trying.
Her attention could have gone to the facts. But her fear was clouding her judgement and ability to see things clearly.
The fact is, we don’t know what’s in the future. But our brains love certainty and because of this, they like to predict the future.
Anna was freaking out because she was predicting a future she didn’t want to happen. And we all do this all the time. But when you understand that your thoughts create your results, you start to see why, so often, we create our own self-fulfilling prophesies.
We create our future in our minds and then we create it in reality.
You align with the future you give your attention to. If Anna continues to freak out and focus on the thought that she can’t lose weight, this is what she will create. When you’re focused and fixated on what could go wrong, that’s what you will attract into your life.
Yet the future is anything but certain. None of us know what’s going to happen.
So ask yourself…
What kind of future do you want to create?
What current thoughts about your future do you want to give power to?
You can focus only hopeful thoughts or harmful thoughts.
You get to decide.
Photo credits: Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash